“Gee!  You’re all right!” said he.  “I’ll call for you after the show.”

Adoree’s smile was uncertain as she demurred.  “Perhaps you’d better meet me here.  What will people say?” But Pope was insistent.

We are accustomed to resent the efforts of our friends to arrange our affairs for us, and we pray for deliverance from their mistakes, yet without their assistance we would often make miserable failures of our lives.  So it was in the case of Bob and Lorelei.

Burning with shame and resentment, she had been strong in her determination to end their marriage, and this frame of mind had continued for some time; but as her anger cooled she dimly understood that a change had come over her and that she no longer looked upon the world with the eyes of a girl.  Simultaneously there came another discovery which completely upset all her calculations and to which she had not fully adjusted herself even up to the time of the critic’s visit to Adoree.  One great mystery she had solved; another, the deepest mystery of a woman’s life, had begun to unfold, and as yet she could scarcely give it credence.

She was surprised when Adoree brought Campbell Pope home with her that night, and she was somewhat diverted by the complete change in their mutual attitude.  Now that the first clash was over, now that they had expressed their dislike and disapproval of each other, they no longer quarreled.  Pope was frankly admiring, and Adoree could not conceal her awe at Campbell’s literary and musical ability.  She explained to Lorelei:  “I asked him in for the sake of the piano.  I knew you were blue, and there’s nothing so cheering as music.”

But when Pope finally got around to play the result was not altogether happy.  Adoree, to be sure, seemed delighted, but Lorelei felt herself gripped by a greater loneliness than usual.  Pope’s music was far from lively, and he had cunningly chosen the hour when it exerts its greatest emotional appeal.  He was artist enough, moreover, to work his effects with certainty.

Lorelei sought relief at length in the seclusion of Adoree’s rear room, and there in the midst of a “crying spell” Bob found her.

Her first quick resentment at the deception practised upon her melted at sight of him, for he had suffered, and he was evidently suffering now.  He was not the Bob she had known, but chastened, repentant, speechless with a tremulous delight at seeing her again.  In the next room Campbell played on, smoothing the way for a reconciliation.

Lorelei found herself in her husband’s arms, listening dazedly to his passionate protestations and his earnest self-denunciation.  Bob had received the fright of his life, his lesson had been seared into him, and he lost no time in telling his wife about it.

At last Lorelei laid her fingers upon his lips, her eyes misty and luminous with the light of a new and wondrous certainty.

“Wait!  Let me speak,” she said.  “I’ve done a lifetime of thinking in these few days.  I’m not sorry that I left you, for it has enabled me to see clearly.  But I’ll never leave you again, Bob, no matter what you do; I can’t—­”